Flurry: Time Spent on Phablets Increased 334% in 2015

New data from Flurry Analytics reveals the growth of phablets, and overall app usage, in 2015.

Flurry Analytics has released its 2015 Year in Review, analyzing the growth of app usage last year. The company found overall app usage increased by 58 percent in 2015, with ‘app usage’ being defined as a user opening an app and have a ‘session’ within it.

Interestingly, every app category except for games saw year-over-year growth in sessions in 2015, led by ‘personalization’ apps, which grew 344 percent in 2015. These apps include things like emoji keyboards and Android lock-screens. Personalization apps were followed by news and magazine apps, which grew by 141 percent in 2015, and by productivity apps, which grew by 119 percent last year. Games, meanwhile, decreased one percent year-over-year.

Breaking down usage based on the size of the device, Flurry found the time users spent on phablets increased 334 percent year-over-year, which was 2.9 times more than the average growth of 117 percent for all device sizes. The phablet category includes devices like the iPhone 6s Plus and Samsung Galaxy Note.

Specifically, phablet users were found to engage with media apps more than the average user. In 2015, growth for news and magazine apps on phablets was 4.8x higher than that of all devices combined, while growth for sports apps and music, media and entertainment apps was 4.6x and 4x higher on phablets than that of all devices combined, respectively.

Flurry found 27 percent of all new devices activated for Christmas in 2015 were phablets, which is an increase from 13 percent in 2014, and from four percent in 2013. For Android specifically, 50 percent of all new devices activated for Christmas in 2015 were phablets. If this growth trend continues, Flurry predicts phablets will account for 59 percent of all smart devices worldwide by Q2 2017.